Michael Vincent Manalo

Michael Vincent Manalo is a self-taught digital mixed media artist, a photographer, photo-manipulator and a musician.

The themes that are mostly seen on his work revolve around surrealism, pseudo-realism, nostalgic sentiments, and human emotion.

He creates his art through merging scenes that have been captured within his mind with scenes that have been captured by his camera to create the living space that his subconscious tries to convey. He does all this through Photoshop.

At present, he is one of the primary contributors for advanced photo-manipulation tutorials for Photoshop Tutorials. He has created various artworks as album covers for international bands/musicians such as Presto Ballet, Michael Samson, Shahin Shahida, Blue Syndrome and others. His works also served as covers for several books produced by international publishing companies such as Playwrights Canada Press, Isla Negra Editores, and The University of New Orleans Publishing.

He has been featured in several galleries and museums in Germany,Georgia, Italy, Philippines, Poland, Great Britain and the USA. He has been featured in several magazines as well such as Advanced Photoshop: Issue 76; profiles section, Blanket Magazine Issue 21 (USA), KISMET Magazine Issue 9 (International), Stone Magazine Issue 21 (USA), Carpaccio Magazine Issue 14 (Italy), Fotoblur Magazine Issue 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (USA), Bayou Magazine Issue 53 (USA) and many others.

His works have also won several notable awards such as: First Prize in the Digital Art Category given by the Art Museum of Chianciano Terme in Italy, a First Place Award given by the Box Heart Gallery in the USA, Best Photography Illustration from The Redmond Digital Arts Festival and a special recognition from the Upstream People Gallery.

At present he is currently participating in Galeria Bielska BWA’s (Poland) artist-in-residency program and with Fellini Gallery’s (Berlin) Mural and Installation Program.

• Photography is my passion and covers a wide range of areas. Since the summer of 2008 I started photographing with the hobby ........meiner einer liebt kräftige Farben und ein wenig Magie,was sich in den Bildern wiederspiegelt

Flavia Marele and Ildiko Muresan are digital artists and sculptors from Transylvania and together they are the creative mix called Harem6.
They are both artists who like experiencing with different mediums creating all sort of strange ceatures, drawings and digital photography.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Chapter 2

Obsessions and fixations are some of the traits of the human mind that I find really astonishing. The fact that a person can fix his mind on something consciously and even unconsciously, either on an unreal or concrete object to produce extraordinary or even eerie actions relating to this fixation is truly mind-boggling.

I’ve seen a lot of obsessive behaviours like little obsession to a certain type of object, person, or emotion to big ones like obsession for power and monopolization; but then what is this Ninth Circle of Obsession then?

In Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, he tried to portray evil’s roots, on what brings upon these devilish actions but in the Ninth Circle of Obsession, I will try to portray the root/s of most obsessions and that would be the following:

The Unending Contemplation of the Past; The Unrelenting Conviction to Ascension and The Enthrallment to the One.

Having grown up in the west part of Germany, i studied Communication Design in Würzburg and spent one semester at an advertising agency in New York. After this i decided to move on to Berlin and founded the studio Ice Cream For Free.
Specialising in the interlacing of contrasting materials via collage, my work has been used by the likes of Adidas, Wired Magazine, Computer Arts as well as various clubs, djs and musicians.